It is time to improve our research design, reporting and interpretation of sex and gender in exercise science and sports medicine research

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Historically, much of the research in exercise science and sports medicine has collected, reported, and discussed sex and gender as synonymous and interchangeable.This conflation has hindered scientific progress, limiting our understanding and potentially reinforcing social biases through poorly framed research questions, flawed methodological designs, and misinterpretations of findings related to sex and gender.Although there are multiple variations in definitions utilised, broadly, gender is a social construct and sex is a biological construct.While sex and gender are intertwined, they can act separately, and they most often act interactively to influence the efficacy of interventions and outcomes.To advance the field, research must explicitly address sex and/or gender at each stage of the research process, at design, reporting, and interpretation as recommended in other health and medicine fields.The current editorial provides a step-by-step process to guide progress in this area (table 1).

Highlights the need to explicitly address and differentiate sex and gender at each stage of research in exercise science and sports medicine.